Hardie Grant is delighted to announce the creation of Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing, after acquiring full ownership of the former joint venture Hardie Grant Egmont.   

The acquisition reinforces Hardie Grant’s focus and investment in the children’s market and will accelerate the international growth of the award-winning children’s publisher as a refreshed, fully owned division of Australia’s largest independent publisher.

Nearly twenty years in the making, Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing now boasts some of the biggest and best names in books for young readers, including the best-selling Billie B Brown author Sally Rippin, Australia’s favourite comedian Peter Helliar, and Megan Hess, the globally successful creator of the Claris picture books. With an impressive list of commercially successful, award-winning titles across all categories, and backed by the established international network of the Hardie Grant Publishing group, Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing will now move to expand its current offices in Melbourne and Sydney and add presence in London and San Francisco. 

“Children’s books have always been at the heart of the publishing business Fiona and I established over twenty years ago,” said Sandy Grant Hardie Grant CEO. “The relationship and business we built with Egmont has flourished as the leading independent house for children’s books in Australia and New Zealand, and given the success of our international expansion across of adult publishing divisions, we find this a perfect time to demonstrate our commitment to and investment in the readers of the future by completing the ownership structure of the group.”

The creation of Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing comes as the publisher gears up for the timely global release of the pandemic-inspired picture book Windows (Patrick Guest and Jonathan Bentley), and the highly anticipated Wolfred, the new story from The Very Cranky Bear author Nick Bland. In 2020 Hardie Grant also announced a partnership with content powerhouse and major animation studio Nickelodeon to deliver the bestselling Real Pigeons series to the big and small screen, as well as new titles to come from the award-winning Welcome To Your Period duo Yumi Stynes and Dr Melissa Kang, in Professor Tim Flannery’s Explore Your World series, and in beloved author-illustrator Philip Bunting’s growing non-fiction range.

“This is an extremely exciting time for the entire group,” said Troy Lewis, MD of Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing. “We are experiencing a renewed energy and excitement and have been buoyed by numerous successes and developments both locally and internationally, most recently Adam Briggs’s incredible Our Home Our Heartbeat, which has entered its third reprint after one month in the market. The momentum is in our sails, and together with a new name and a renewed spirit we have a solid footing to continue to lead the market in delivering meaningful content for modern families. In addition, we can continue to focus on not only providing a platform for these stories to be heard locally but delivering them to the world.”

The completion of ownership of the children’s division cements Hardie Grant as the largest independent publishing house in Australia, whose established international network now provides an enviable platform from which to deliver Australian children’s content to the world.